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Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

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Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#61

Post by bestouff »

I'm coding since I'm a kid (around 5, and I'm now nearing 50), mainly C/C++ with the occasional whatever other language you encounter in a normal coder life.

I had lost it a few years ago. Gdb fatigue, tried higher-level languages (js, java, etc.) but it didn't click. And then I discovered rust nearing its 1.0 release. That was it.

After introducing it at work and being really pleased with the result, I changed jobs and now use it less, but even when coding in C/C++ I'm happier now.

Learning rust has made me a better C coder, it has made me interested in building stuff again, I'm even back doing side projects (although I have a family so I have to spare my time).

There are many new shiny stuff, find the one that clicks with you. Or find something else (a friend of mine is now a paragliding instructor), life is short.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#62

Post by engineerDave »

pmarreck wrote: post #33

Switched to a functional language (Elixir) from an OO one (Ruby). Now it's only JS that annoys me, since CSS is declarative and therefore less of a headache.

this x1000. My main frustration with imperative programming has become the devops plumbing and defensive nature in code that was needed to get something done.

Switching to Elixir - learning what OTP brings to the table, e.g. observers, genservers - distillery compiled binaries per OS, negating the need for a lot of the devops complexity, e.g. docker, node, - the switch to esbuild and liveview for less JS cruft - FP transforming of immutable data to more immutable data vs managing state

TBH all of it has been a breath of fresh air.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#63

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

roognarook wrote: post #39
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

Ever think about trying embedded development? It doesn't pay as well as web development. But it moves more slowly, it's not going anywhere, and it can be a stepping stone towards getting to work with your hands in a technical role. As a more general response to OP's question, you can always switch industries. We're lucky to work with code, because everything runs on it. Finance, agriculture, medicine, vehicles...movi…

thanks for the suggestion, will look into it.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#64

Post by [deleted] »

mdp2021 wrote: post #47
roognarook wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever think about trying embedded development? It doesn't pay as well as web development. But it moves more slowly, it's not going anywhere, and it can be a stepping stone towards getting to work with your hands in a technical role. As a more general response to OP's question, you can always switch industries. We're lucky to work with code, because everything runs on it. Finance, agriculture, medicine, vehicles...movi…

> agriculture This I did not know. > vehicles This I hoped would never happen (security and privacy) - but anyway. (It has been a problem for well over a full decade, I know.) Anyway, as said, there is some light side: providing features while defending as much as possible security and privacy is a stimulating goal. One would feel more comfortable, though, if that were an established, common, given, granted goal.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#65

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

LaundroMat wrote: post #53
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

What medium are you expressing your creative and problem-solving urges through now?

I guess I meant it in a kind of half poetic sense. I would like to write, or maybe do some kind of digital or video art.

I got into web dev around 98-99 and i've been doing it ever since.

I think what appealed to me about it about the time was the immediacy of it, being able to write these little js widgets and see them in action instantly. Trying to build these intricate table layouts to replicate the offline versions of various websites that came on a disc with internet magazines.

But the field has changed a lot over the years, first it was the iPhone and mobile-web, CSS animations, SVG, Canvas, Node JS, with JS on a server, React, Redux, State management, and now CI and DevOps, Unit tests, TS, - and the endless deprecations and changes that seem to occur faster than I can keep up with.

The things I used to enjoy are only a fraction of my job, and even those parts have become kind of complex - at least for me. I feel like, as others have said, front end is quite messy and the result of that is that I never feel satisfied that I can complete something and just "Get it right". Seems like the edge-cases are infinite, devices, displays, and other weird quirks...

- sorry for the rant.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#66

Post by wez470 »

This has happened to me a couple times. Feeling tired of what I call the "tech rat race".

Both times some time off and working on an idea for fun sparked interest again. I would say if you take time off, don't feel pressured to do anything tech related. At some point you may get a creative idea and then just follow that. One time I finished a gameboy emulator I had started a few years ago, the other I made a little video game. And if you don't get the urge to do anything tech the whole time you're off, at least you'll have some R&R to go back to work with a fresh mind.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#67

Post by cake »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #65
LaundroMat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What medium are you expressing your creative and problem-solving urges through now?

I guess I meant it in a kind of half poetic sense. I would like to write, or maybe do some kind of digital or video art. I got into web dev around 98-99 and i've been doing it ever since. I think what appealed to me about it about the time was the immediacy of it, being able to write these little js widgets and see them in action instantly. Trying to build these intricate table layouts to replicate the offline versio…

Same here, what I loved about the web was the immediacy. You edited 2-3 files and you were done!

Today I had to work with Angular, this thing is insane. So many files, so many layers, so slow... This thing makes me hate what I do.

I wish web dev took a different direction towards more simplicity.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#68

Post by ewagsjr »

ultrasounder wrote: post #55
roognarook wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever think about trying embedded development? It doesn't pay as well as web development. But it moves more slowly, it's not going anywhere, and it can be a stepping stone towards getting to work with your hands in a technical role. As a more general response to OP's question, you can always switch industries. We're lucky to work with code, because everything runs on it. Finance, agriculture, medicine, vehicles...movi…

As an embedded systems guy(Hardware guy who works "on"embedded firmware), i can attest to the fact that its not going anywhere, but caveat emptor, Its glacial growth when you consider career growth and salaries. Also, the tech stack is tied to a couple of big name tooling chain vendors and chip vendors. And after writing the same old I2C/SPI driver for the nth time, you start feeling like the OP. So grass is always g…

Isn't a majority of the industry Electrical Engineers who know how to code? You also have a lot more physical hardware constraints to work around unlike standard computers where the lowest baseline is still quite a bit for standard app dev.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#69

Post by ultrasounder »

ewagsjr wrote: post #68
ultrasounder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an embedded systems guy(Hardware guy who works "on"embedded firmware), i can attest to the fact that its not going anywhere, but caveat emptor, Its glacial growth when you consider career growth and salaries. Also, the tech stack is tied to a couple of big name tooling chain vendors and chip vendors. And after writing the same old I2C/SPI driver for the nth time, you start feeling like the OP. So grass is always g…

Isn't a majority of the industry Electrical Engineers who know how to code? You also have a lot more physical hardware constraints to work around unlike standard computers where the lowest baseline is still quite a bit for standard app dev.

Nope! Maybe the trend is that a lot of kids these days double major( in the us) and end up with some passable programming skills. It’s still not the primary focus. Like you mentioned the focus is working with physical constraints in a cross functional environment

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#70

Post by ewagsjr »

ultrasounder wrote: post #69
ewagsjr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a majority of the industry Electrical Engineers who know how to code? You also have a lot more physical hardware constraints to work around unlike standard computers where the lowest baseline is still quite a bit for standard app dev.

Nope! Maybe the trend is that a lot of kids these days double major( in the us) and end up with some passable programming skills. It’s still not the primary focus. Like you mentioned the focus is working with physical constraints in a cross functional environment

The company I interned at did timer and wall din switches which were pretty interesting. They were timid letting me do much programming because it was freshman -> sophomore summer so I basically tackled a counter on one of their wall outlet timers that adjusted with a knob on the front and realized the embedded world was not for me haha. It is REALLY cool to hold your code in your hands, though.
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